Analysis: Navy Was Correct In Firing Head Coach

December 14, 1989|By BILL TANTON The Baltimore Evening Sun

Navy has baffled a lot of people. Many are wondering why it fired Coach Elliot Uzelac two days after a national television audience watched and heard him call on kicker Frank Schenk in the final minute of the Army game for a 32-yard field goal and a stirring 19-17 victory.

What does the brass at Annapolis, Md., do to coaches who lose to Army? Shoot 'em?

Some outstanding coaches have left Navy under duress after losing to Army.

Eddie Erdelatz was 5-2-1 against the West Pointers, but when he lost No. 3 in '58 he was history. The man who replaced him in '59, Wayne Hardin, beat Army five consecutive games, but when he failed to make it six in 1964 he was gone.

All that was understandable. Navy has long said a season is successful only if it beats Army. But this, firing a man after he beats Army? People might wonder, what's wrong with these people?

The answer: nothing.

Outsiders may be scratching their heads, but insiders know Navy did the right thing, painful as it may be to some good people.

Elliot Uzelac is not a bad football coach. If he were, he would never have been hired.

He had coached at Navy before, so he was a known commodity. He has an impressive resume. He came from a great program - Michigan's. He is a good man. He worked hard.

But Navy showed no progress in his three years. He won two or three games a season. His record was 8-25, a poor 3-8 this year. He regularly lost to teams in the supposedly weaker National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I-AA.

The truth is, people are saluting Navy athletic director Jack Lengyel for the decisive way he handled this. Lengyel, incidentally, did not hire Uzelac; Bo Coppedge did.

"It was a gutsy move," said one person Tuesday, "and it shows that a new era is here - the Lengyel era.

"Uzelac was never going to get the program off the ground so Lengyel had to do it. With a big-time coach, we can have a big-time program."

One alumnus and former Navy athlete threw another light on it.

"There was no alumni support for Uzelac," he said. "We all wondered if Lengyel would have the guts to fire him.

"If he hadn't made the move now, if he had let Uzelac serve out the last year of his contract, we'd just be another year behind and there'd be justification for looking at Lengyel. As it is now, I think people have a lot of confidence in Lengyel."

But, the alumnus was asked, doesn't beating Army count for something?

"If Uzelac could get the team to play this way against Army," he said, "why couldn't he get them ready to play The Citadel, James Madison and Delaware?"

Uzelac is not a bad coach, but he is not the exceptional coach it takes to win at a service academy. These places are different.

Before the Army-Navy telecast Saturday, there was a show on CBS about West Point football. An interview with Doc Blanchard, Mr. Inside to Glenn Davis' Mr. Outside at Army in the mid-1940s, gave a revealing insight to that.

Blanchard told of a day at practice when a young line coach was berating the players until the head coach, Col. Earl "Red" Blaik, instructed him to stop.

"You don't need to discipline these players," Blaik told him. "They get that all day long at West Point."

That young coach was Vince Lombardi, who went on with the Green Bay Packers to become the greatest football coach of his time. Even Lombardi had to be told.

The pressure now is on Lengyel. The move is a good one only if he hires a better coach than Uzelac.

Lengyel has a better chance of accomplishing that than his predecessors. They were career Navy officers. Capt. Bo Coppedge finally retired and became Navy's first civilian athletic director.

Lengyel is a different animal. He is a career coach and administrator. He is president of the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics. He has worked seemingly everywhere and he knows everybody.

Remember this: Lengyel is a football man first and foremost. He coached the sport at five colleges. An AD is quick to revamp a program in the sport he knows best, as Lew Perkins, a basketball man, showed at Maryland.

Lengyel is of a broader collegiate world than the Navy ADs who would only hire coaches with previous experience at the academy. Uzelac and his predecessor, Gary Tranquill, had that; their combined record as head coaches at Navy was 28-59-1.

"That's not even a consideration now," says a man who will have a voice in selecting the new man.